InfoArmy announced this week that it had raised $17.3 million in Series B funding to finance the company’s data-as-a-service competitive intelligence service. The funding was announced at the CrowdConf 2012 event.
InfoArmy describes itself as “crowdsourced competitive intelligence” aimed primarily at sales and marketing organizations. The company recruits independent researchers to assemble competitive intelligence reports on companies; researchers are compensated using a revenue-sharing model.
The company was founded in 2011 and had its public launch in June, 2012.
Jim Fowler, CEO and Founder of InfoArmy, previously founded Jigsaw, one of the first examples of crowdsourced intelligence for sales and marketing professionals. Jigsaw was sold to Salesforce.com in 2011 and is now part of that company’s Data.com service.
“Our goal is to recruit a global army of researchers to build the largest and most comprehensive database of business intelligence reports in existence,” said Fowler in a statement. “This raise further validates our model and the whole concept of crowdsourcing and the crowdsourcing industry.”
Norwest Venture Partners will lead the funding round with participation from Trinity Ventures. Representatives from Norwest and Trinity will join InfoArmy’s board of directors.
